


The dreams that you dare to dream

by belmanoir



Series: She's always a woman to me [2]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 20:56:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3148289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belmanoir/pseuds/belmanoir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during season 4. Nate is spending the night at a hotel because Hardison is doing an overnight tech upgrade at his apartment. He invites Sophie over to watch <em>Double Indemnity</em> on TV. Also, there's karaoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The dreams that you dare to dream

Sophie slid onto a bar stool. " _Double Indemnity_ is showing on TCM tonight. I thought maybe we could watch it at your place."

"Hardison has been doing some kind of tech upgrade in my living room for the last three nights." Nate poured her a shot of whiskey. "I'm actually going to a hotel tonight just to get away from the shouting."

Sophie tilted her head, intrigued. "What hotel?"

Nate shrugged. "The Boston Harbor Hotel," he said offhandedly, and then waited for her reaction.

"Nate! You were going to a five-star hotel and you weren't going to invite anybody?"

His eyes twinkled. "I think there's cable in the room if you want to come over and watch _Double Indemnity_."

###

When dressing for a date with I-don't-want-a-relationship Nate, Sophie aimed for casually irresistible, as if maybe this was how she always dressed for a night out with a friend. (In Sophie's case, "a night out with a friend" was a standard with a good bit of leeway.) She decided on a forties-style cocktail dress, dark red with black beading around the plunging V-neck. There was something cozy and informal in the way the rayon knit gathered and draped, like a gentle hand shaping her waist and legs. 

Stockings with a line down the back, of course; Nate loved that. He'd probably love it if she drew a line on her naked legs in eyeliner like girls did on the Home Front during rationing, but that showed too much effort. 

Black velvet high-heeled sandals, check. Hair twisted a little before pinning to give the faint impression of victory rolls, check. Rhinestone hairpins, check. Parker would look lovely in victory rolls. 

Sophie contemplated it for a moment as she slipped in a pair of delicate gold earrings, nothing flashy but eye-catching in the right light. In a noir film, Parker would have to be the ingenue, not the femme fatale. But why? There was plenty of wickedness and tragedy in her. Was it because she didn't like to make eye contact? Sophie considered an anklet. No, too much. She put an extra pair of knickers in a baggie in the bottom of her purse and headed out the door.

###

Nate was waiting for her in the bar. "A plate of oysters, please," he called to the bartender when he saw her. Sophie loved oysters, and she also loved it that Nate was telling her straightaway that he wanted to sleep with her later. It made the evening so much less stressful. 

"This bar has one of the best collections of single malt scotch in the city," he said. "What's your poison?"

She slid onto a stool and leaned in. "Don't drink _too_ much," she said suggestively. She wasn't actually worried about Nate's ability to perform, since he'd never had a problem yet—but might as well get him thinking about erections early, if he wasn't already. She looked him over: white shirt, one button undone, decent slacks, and a dark sport coat. Did he know what his perpetual air of rakish dishevelment did to her? Probably. 

He'd ironed more back when he had a straight job, and it gave every wrinkle an extra _frisson_ , whispering _I'm on your side of things now_. "Oysters, you said? I'll have an Aphrodite's Potion." Vodka, strawberries, ginger, and prosecco: now there was an aphrodisiac. "What's going on over there?" She gestured to where speakers and monitors were being set up across the room. 

"Oh, it's a karaoke party for a wedding," the bartender told her. "We're closing down the bar after 9PM, invited guests only."

Nate's eyes lit, and Sophie smiled back. The bartender slid a beautiful pink champagne coupe toward her, and she toasted Nate with it. 

###

"Which half of the couple are you friends with?" Sophie asked. "Oh, that must be why we've never met, I'm friends with Jack's mother. From wayyy back."

Nate leaned in. "Keep it plausible," he whispered in her ear. She smiled, even though they both knew she _was_ actually the same age as Jack's mother.

"You should sing something," he said.

She eyed him consideringly. "Only if you do too."

"You know I can't sing," he protested, and remembering the scalpel-like pens of her _Sound of Music_ reviewers, Sophie felt warm that _somebody_ believed she had talent. She shrugged, taking a sip of her second cocktail, and waited. "You're not going to let me out of this, are you?" he asked.

"Mm-mm."

She loved seeing him smile at her with that resigned, helpless fondness. He looked at her like a life sentence. One of these days he'd figure that out, and then she'd have to decide if a life sentence was something she could do. 

_What is marriage? Is it running around rooftops in Paris? I don't think so. No, it's pushing a cart around the Home Depot. It's hard work._ Nate had been drunk and maybe he'd be shocked that she even still remembered what he'd said, but...they both knew he was right. And Sophie wasn't a Home Depot kind of girl. She wasn't even a hard work kind of girl. Sometimes she woke in a cold sweat dreaming that she and Nate were married and she was burning a meatloaf in the oven, babies wailing in the next room. 

But until push came to shove, she planned to enjoy that look on his face.

They stole a songbook off a nearby table. "You first," Sophie said, and Nate turned pages at random, grimacing, until finally writing something on a slip of paper without letting her see.

Sophie flipped through the book. Something femme fatale..."Fever"? "Embraceable You"? Too straightforwardly love songs, she thought. Judy Garland, though...ah, perfect. "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." Old glamor, but with a wistful, lost-little-girl edge. Nate would plotz. She handed him her slip to take to the host. "No peeking."

###

Her name was called before his. She gave Nate a reproachful look. "We agreed you first."

He shrugged.

"Did you even give him yours?"

"I'm right behind you," he promised, and she rolled her eyes and went up. 

"Jack and Melanie, I just want to say how happy I am for you both!" Good Lord, the song's karaoke mix was atrocious. She killed it anyway. Nate was definitely wiping away tears, and he was not the only one.

"Let's get out of here," he said in a low voice when she got back to the table. She just shook her head.

"Tom Baker?" the host said.

Nate cleared his throat and shook out his sport coat—putting his grifter face on, too oblivious and self-centered to notice or care about anyone's disapproval. Nate's personas always had the thick skin he tried to cultivate himself and never really managed. He approached the mic, chuckling. "Jack and Melanie, if you make each other as happy as Sarah Jane has been making me, you have nothing to worry about. This one's for you, honey." Sophie fluttered and ducked her head and mimed catching the kiss he blew at her.

She didn't recognize the music at first, not until Nate started singing.

_She waits for me at night_  
_She waits for me in silence_  
_She gives me all her tenderness_  
_And takes away my pain_  
_And so far she hasn't run_  
_Though I swear she's had her moments_  
_She still believes in miracles_  
_While others cry in vain..._

He managed hokey for the first few lines, but after that he didn't bother, letting his sincerity be a kind of parody of its own. What was it with Americans and Billy Joel? Oh damn, he had her beat.

_And I ask her how she knew_  
_To reach out for me at that moment_  
_And she smiles because it's understood..._

He smiled at her, not a Tom Baker smile but a sly Nate smile, drawing out the pause a beat, letting the answer only the two of them knew stretch between them: because she was a grifter and she always knew. Her eyes stung, filling when his voice cracked on a high note he must have known he couldn't hit. 

_There are people who have lost  
Every trace of human kindness..._

He met her eyes across the room, and she knew he thought that could easily be him, but it couldn't. It always took her knees out from under her, how he could drop his walls from one word to the next because she wanted him to. Thief or not, criminal mastermind or not, ruthless son-of-a-bitch or not, his kindness ran deepest of anyone's she'd ever met. So deep he couldn't get rid of it even when he tried his damnedest. 

"Oh, and hey," Nate finished, "if any of you have a sore throat or a burst eardrum tomorrow after all this singing, I'm an ENT on State Street, 555-NOSE, Dr. Tom Baker."

"Let's get out of here," she said when he got back to their table, and he offered her his arm.

###

"I'll just slip into something more comfortable. Order us up some chocolate fondue and champagne from room service, will you?" In the bathroom (it was a wonderful bathroom, she was definitely bathing in the jacuzzi later), she took her hair down, fluffed it, and slid off her dress and shoes. She paused in the doorway, lit from behind in her black silk slip and stockings, and then came and sat on the sofa, letting her slip ride up _just_ enough to show him she was wearing a garter belt.

He scooted towards her for a kiss, his warm hand cupping her cheek, and she almost lost her resolve. But she pushed him back to the other side and put her feet up in his lap. "I thought you invited me over to watch a movie," she scolded.

He turned on the TV. Sophie did love this movie, even if she thought Barbara Stanwyck could have chosen a better mark. If the first insurance agent seemed weak and likely to betray you, try another one, honestly. 

"Why do you think it's so hard to cast Parker as the femme fatale? She could _be_ one easily enough."

He thought it over. "Parker's too literal. The femme fatale persona is all about the power of suggestion."

Yes. That was it. She nestled deeper into the cushions, letting her heels press lightly into his thigh. Barbara Stanwyck came down the stairs, anklet gleaming, and Nate put his thumb and forefinger around her ankle. She looked at him, and she didn't know what happened but suddenly she was in his lap kissing him desperately. Room service knocked on the door, and Nate gripped her waist tightly and said, "Don't you dare move. Come in! You can just leave it over there, I put a tip on the dresser."

She hid behind her hair until the bellboy was out of the room. "Nate! You put a tip on the dresser?"

"That was plan M," he said, boyish and dissolute, his eyes glinting at her.

"I thought Hardison died in plan M."

"None of tonight's plans involve Hardison."

Sophie suspected that Nate did actually have a plan for what if Hardison called and said the bar was on fire, but at that point he brushed her cheek with the backs of his nails and she was lost again. She'd never been with anyone who made her forget herself so completely, just go up like flashpaper when he looked at her. It was unreal, this mad chemistry they had. Thirteen years since they met and he affected her just as strongly as ever.

"Bed," he murmured, pushing at her. "My back can't take sex on a couch anymore." She liked that he didn't try to carry her, that he never tried to prove anything with his body. He walked her backwards to the bed, still kissing her hungrily. 

And then somehow he was already inside her and she'd lost time, lost everything but the feel of him and the hot imprint of his mouth on her legs and breasts, now cool in the air, assuring her that yes, he did love foreplay. She couldn't remember the last time before him she'd had sex without a condom. There was nothing between them at all, nothing. 

"Sophie," he said. "Sophie," and when he said her name it felt real, it felt like her name. That was what frightened her, that he might make her real before she was ready.

She only stopped herself from blurting out _You'll have to go to Home Depot with Eliot because I refuse_ by giving him a hickey on his collarbone.

###

Nate always looked like a car wreck after sex, worn out as if she were a succubus who'd bled him dry. She liked it. She bounced upright, inwardly feeling a little sentimental over his seed trickling out of her. Slapping him encouragingly on the thigh, she said, "Oh good, the movie's just getting to the good part. Mmm, chocolate!"


End file.
